This 1920 EV Doesn’t Have A Steering Wheel—And It

• This 1920 Milburn EV didn’t have a steering wheel, but it’s still very easy to drive.
• Here’s a glimpse at what a car from the electric vehicles’ first golden age was like, courtesy of a POV driving video.
• This particular example is original and fully operational, and you can buy it for $30,000.

The United States had thousands of electric vehicles on its streets around the turn of the 20th century, but by 1920, their popularity had already started to decline. By 1935, they were practically gone. This makes cars like the 1920 Milburn Light Electric Model 27L examples of what peak urban transportation was like at the end of EVs’ first golden age. The company that made it went out of business three years later.

Why do I say it was superior to other forms of personal urban transportation? Well, it was quiet and easy to drive and operate in an age when combustion cars were noisy and smelly and you had to know how to shift gears manually. They also needed to be crank-started, which wasn’t only difficult but also potentially dangerous.

EVs, even ones built over a century ago, had the same advantages of modern electric cars except for today’s cars’ ridiculous horsepower and acceleration figures that put them way ahead of any combustion car in a straight line. Electric city runabouts like the Milburn didn’t even have a steering wheel, and you operated it using a couple of tillers instead.

That may sound odd, but once you understand what everything does, it’s actually pretty simple. One tiller controls the speed and the other is used to steer. The brake is on the floor, though, like in any car. I’ve always wondered what it must have been like to drive one of these cars in period, but watching this video helped answer many of my questions.

This car is for sale on Bring a Trailer in Saint Louis, and the seller wants $30,000 for what they say is a completely original car that has only done 4,000 miles since new. It rides on 25-inch wood wheels, and, interestingly, it is listed as having five forward and two reverse gears, although I didn’t observe any shifting in the POV driving video.

It runs on five 12-volt batteries and the ad notes that when new, Milburn offered a battery swapping system that used rolling trays to quickly exchange spent batteries for fully charged ones without having to wait for them to charge.

Battery swapping isn’t a recent invention, and it was actually pretty common in the early 1900s.

It is a fantastic piece of rolling history that instantly transports you back to the age when it was built. It has two forward-facing seats and two additional rear-facing flip-down seats, so you can take three of your friends along for what should be a pretty unique automotive experience.